


Pie

by excessiveprepositionalphrases



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: CW: sprain, Fluff, Friend-Insert, Gen, Pie, Self-Insert, a little pie, a little soft medical treatment, because of course, medical scenes, this is completely plotless, you know the deal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24397468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excessiveprepositionalphrases/pseuds/excessiveprepositionalphrases
Summary: In which I drag a friend into a very fun, but very awkward, interaction. Some more fun, silly stuff for the DSD universe! Writing in some more OCs!
Comments: 14
Kudos: 11
Collections: Deep Space Discord Literary Universe





	Pie

0300\. A good time for…absolutely nothing to occur, thought M, as she studied her console. No subspace communiques at this hour, at least not tonight. M held her warm coffee close in her hands and appreciated the steam billowing softly from it. It was cool in OPS tonight. Miles always proudly proclaimed he kept the station’s temperature constant, but M was convinced that it shifted a little from day to day. Right now it seemed to her that it had cooled off at least 2 or 3 degrees, and she had her warmest blanket tucked around her legs. She was almost entirely alone at this time of night, the only people left in OPS being a handful of security officers and tactical, whose job it was to monitor the ships coming in and out of the wormhole. The nature of space was that time was deeply relative. What was morning on Bajor was night elsewhere, and what was 3 AM on the station was an perfectly reasonable hour to arrive as far as some of the approaching ships were concerned.

M lifted her coffee and considered her plans for the next few hours. Without any transmissions to translate, she was free to do anything she liked, so long as she didn’t leave her post. She used the spare moments to read all the most entertaining news from the surrounding planets. She chose a newspaper file on her PADD, and settled in.

* * *

“Come again?” I grumbled.

“You awake?” came the voice on the other end of the communicator.

“I am _now._ ”

“I need your help.”

“It’s – computer, time?”

“The time is 0330 hours.”

“Ivek. _Ivek_. It’s 3 AM.”

“I know, I know!” Ivek said. “But I need your help. Get out of bed, and meet me on the promenade.”

I drug myself angrily out of bed and grumbled down to the promenade. Ivek was standing in the middle of the empty promenade, staring angrily at a round ottoman that was placed in the middle of the floor.

“What are we doing?” I asked him. He gestured angrily at the ottoman.

“This is, quite possibly, the worst design choice I have ever seen. It is illogical.”

“I mean” – I yawned – “I agree, but…it’s 3 am.”

“And?”

“Right, right,” I conceded. “So…?”

“Time to get rid of it!”

“If you say so. …Wait, how?”

Ivek smiled a subtle, Vulcan smile. “Elbow grease,” he said, and reached down to pick up one of the portions of the sectioned ottoman.

“I can’t believe I let you drag me into these things,” I said, picking up another part of the badly placed seating unit.

“It’s because you love me.”

“That I do, my dear Vulcan. That I do.”

“I think I shall go back to sleep,” Ivek said as we finished our work, surveying the now unblocked promenade pathway.

“I don’t think I can,” I answered. “You’ve got my adrenaline up with all this almost-law breaking, and…”

“We didn’t _break_ any _laws_ , we simply improved the usability of the station’s communal areas.”

“I love how you manage to combine logic and chaos into the same sentence. I really do.”

Ivek tilted his head to the side slightly, his curly dark hair glinting a little in the light that always flowed into the darkened promenade from nearby sun streaming into the large windows. When he looked this way, it was if his grandfathers – both of them at once, somehow – were looking right at me. “It’s a family trait,” he said knowingly.

* * *

“Goooood evening,” M said, leaning on the words like Dracula. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

“Ivek needed my help with…a project. I’m too wired up to go back to sleep, so I thought I would come say hi.”

M took a long sip of her coffee.

“Nothing specific, of course,” she said.

“No, not at all.”

We stared at each other for a long moment.

“No!” she said, giggling. “I will not!”

“Oh come ON!” I pleaded. “Lunch. The holosuites. Something? I’m sure I can invent a non-threatening group activity.”

“That’s not the problem, and you know it.”

“You asked me, M!”

She sat back into her chair and nursed her coffee. “I know, I know. I think I underestimated…”

She paused.

“What?” I asked.

“I wandered by the infirmary on my way to bed yesterday morning. Just to…you know. Observe. There is absolutely no way I can talk to that man.”

“I can break your nose, if you want. Then you won’t be able avoid him.”

“Is that a _threat?”_

“Maaaaaybe,” I said.

Another long, thoughtful sip of coffee. I knew by now that it was a strategy. It was impossible to talk with a mouthful of coffee, and M knew it. She stared slyly at me over her coffee cup.

“How about this: you bake a pie, and take him some. Julian’s got a sweet tooth like you wouldn’t believe. Show up with pie, and he’s yours. Well – not yours, I just mean – he’s not mine either, and if I’m being completely honest about it we both know he really belongs to the lizard – you know what I mean. The way to Julian’s heart is pastries.”

M blushed.

“Julian’s ready to absolutely LAVISH affection on anyone who gets close enough,” I continued. “All it took for me to end up close to him was to get within hugging distance and stay there.”

“I’m not sure I’m emotionally prepared for that.”

“Oh come ooooon! It’s not like he bites.” I pleaded.

“No! He just bats his eyelashes at everyone! That’s _much_ worse.”

I leaned back on the console and let the moment hang in the air.

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t push you…I don’t even really mean to. I mean I totally do, but only if you’re comfortable. Well, not comfortable…if you don’t actually want to get to know him, I’m not going to force you, but I feel like it’s my duty as your friend to shove you out of your comfort zone a little, especially when there’s good things outside it. And Doctor Julian Bashir is a very good thing.”

M heaved a relenting sigh. “What kind of pie?” she asked.

* * *

“I was really hoping I would find you eating pie.”

The Doctor looked up from his tea, confused. “Why pie?”

“It’s a long story.”

“The replicator does a fantastic apple, if pie is what you’re after.”

“That’s fine. I have a feeling someone might turn up with some, though,” I said.

Julian raised a disbelieving eyebrow. I settled into a familiar spot in front of a computer console and poked at it absentmindedly.

“Clearing your caches often?” I asked, tapping around the maintenance settings. “These systems have to be very gently treated. You’ve got to maintain them or else they start complaining.”

“I’m rather good at treating things gently,” he replied, and leaned back on the console. I could feel myself blushing.

“I walked right into that, didn’t I?”

“You certainly did.”

“Doctor?” said a voice from the doorway. It was quiet, shaky, and immediately familiar: it was the sound of a very nervous looking M, with a pie plate in her hands. At the sound of an unsure voice, Julian flicked on his most consoling tone like a light switch.

“Are you alright?” he asked, pulling himself up to his full height and moving – cautiously – towards her.

“Who? Me? Oh, no, I’m-I’m-I’m fine,” she stuttered.

“I brought you pie!” added brightly, extending the baked good in her hands. “It’s…apple and icoberry…I thought that sounded like an odd combination but Savannah told me you were a fan?”

Julian’s eyes lit up. “I am! But…can I ask what this is about? Have I done something specific, to deserve a pie?”

M flinched slightly, anxiety starting to show in her eyes. “No…no…I just thought…she told me you were into pastries, so…”

Julian very happily took the pie plate from M’s hands and sniffed it. I was next to him with a fork in my hand before he got the chance to ask for one. The happiness on his face was of a kind that seemed to be unique to the presence of desserts. “She was exactly right. How very thoughtful of you! And I don’t even know your name.”

“Maryannalyn. My parents wanted to name me after both my grandmothers and my aunt…it got a bit long. Most people just call me M, Sir.”

He already had a mouthful of pie by the time she finished her sentence, and he had absolutely no problem talking with his mouth full. It was, as he always was, very cute. “Julian, please!” he said, though his bite of pie. “I never quite got used to being called sir. This is _delicious_!”

“I’m thrilled…I wasn’t sure how it would come out.”

“Do you mean to tell me you haven’t tasted it?”

“Well, no –”

“We can’t have that!”

I thrust a fork in M’s direction before she had a chance to argue. Julian pulled over some chairs, and we sat in a circle, all working on the centrally placed pie. M’s sleeve pulled up her arm as she reached for another bite of pie, and Julian honed in on purplish spot on her skin. I winced. I could see it in his eyes already: he was _going_ , and there was nothing I could do to stop him.

“Is that a bruise?” he asked, his tone changing again from friendly to doctoral. M looked at him in a panic, and held her arm close to her chest.

“It’s not a big deal. It’s a minor injury.”

“It’s very dark,” he said.

M silently rubbed her spots. “I’d normally have Dr. Girani take care of it, since she’s the one who’s here during my shift…most of the time…I did this last night, and I just hadn’t gotten the chance. It’s really nothing, I’ll be fine.”

Julian set down his fork and leaned in, holding his hands out to M. “Come on, let’s see it,” he said softly. M extended her hand nervously in his direction. He carefully examined the dark purple splotch on the inside of wrist.

“The placement of this looks like a tendon injury. How did you get this?”

“I tripped on the stairs and twisted it funny.”

He took her hand and pivoted it around the wrist joint a wide circle. “Does this hurt?” he asked.

M flinched, mid circle. “A little…right there in the middle,” she said.

“Just as I suspected – not a bruise but a minor sprain.”

“So can you just…make it stop hurting?” M asked.

“Sadly, for this particular injury, no. Sprains have to heal on their own. We should immobilize it, though - I’ll be back.”

He stood and went off in search of something. Bandages, I assumed. M looked at me like she wanted me dead.

“What?” I whispered hastily. “You wanted to meet the doctor, after all…”

“You – ” M began.

Julian reappeared just in time to save me from whatever well earned insult had been headed my way. He had rolls of beige fabric bandages in his hands. “A cast is a little overkill for something like this, but even a little bit of movement restriction or support makes a big difference to a sprain. I know the bandages seem a little old fashioned, but for some injuries, it’s really the best medicine,” he explained, taking M’s hand again and gently, and very expertly, wrapping the bandages around her hand and wrist. “Tell me if it’s too tight, okay?” he added. He was doing _the voice._

M looked like she was having an out of body experience. She nodded frantically. Julian took his time with the bandages, clearly putting some artistic flair into it. When he declared himself finished, M looked like she had been treated by the most artistically flamboyant doctor this side of an ancient battlefield. It was a rather funny sight.

“Better?” Julian asked, releasing her hand. She tested it, and smiled.

“Better.”

And then she stuck her fork into the pie.

* * *

“If you EVER do that to me again, I’m going to kill you,” M said. We were working our way slowly to OPS.

“Do you mean to tell me you didn’t enjoy it?” I asked.

“…no.”

“Does your wrist feel better?”

“…yeah.”

“Well?” I said, hoping I had made my point.

“I can still feel where he touched me,” she said, looking down at her hand. “It’s been half an hour and…” – she pressed her fingers into her wrist, exactly copying Julian’s hand placement – “I still know that’s where his fingers were. Why?”

“That’s just Julian. It’s a common side effect of treatment by our CMO.”

“How did you get used to it?”

“Who, me? Oh, I never got used to it. I just scream on inside, now,” I said.

“I don’t hate it,” she whispered.

“Luckily, that particular feeling is abundant supply – all our doctor charges is a smile and a pastry.”


End file.
